Cookies For A Cause: Tasty Treats & Girl Power

It’s 100 years and counting for Girl Scouts of the USA. No doubt you’ve seen the sweet treats all around the office and neighborhood as the 3.2 million members nationwide get in sales mode usually from October through May.

To help mark that milestone birthday, Girl Scout cookie boxes have been redesigned, the first new look in 13 years. You’ll notice how the new boxes feature the entrepreneurship and business literacy skills that the agency aims to teach its members: goal setting, decision making, money management, people skills and business ethics, the organization noted in a release.

“When a Girl Scout sells you cookies, she’s doing more than just handing you a box. She’s creating a plan, interacting with customers, and working as part of a team,” said Cindy L. Odom, CEO of Girl Scouts of Western New York. “She’s building a lifetime of skills and confidence which validates an important part of Girl Scouting which is to inspire girls to reach their full potential.”

For a mere $3.50 per box, you can enjoy all the favorites, including Caramel de Lites, Lemonades, Peanut Butter Sandwich, Peanut Butter Patties, Thanks-A-Lot, Shortbread and Thin Mints.

Mango Cremes and Mango Crèmes with Nutrifusion™ are new this year. Girl Scouts are environmentally-conscious as the group goes green with new Lemonades™ and Thanks-A-Lot® cookies. These cookies are not placed in cartons, resulting in 300 tons of paperboard saved per year.

Here at WBEN, we have a few self-proclaimed “Cookie Monsters,” so what better time to have the staff do our taste test of all the Girl Scout cookies available this year. Cookie comments are as varied as our staff. The survey says:

“I love peanut butter, so the peanut butter sandwiches are my favorite, with the mint ones being a close second, I LOVE MINT! They use to have a chocolate caramel cookie with I think coconut flakes on it that was great, is that still around or do I just not see it? They should add a S’Mores one if they don’t already have it.I bought them when my nieces were little, now I get them from the neighborhood kids when they come around.”Tom Matte, engineer

”YUM! My favorite is a tie between the Peanut Butter Pattie and the Lemonade one. I’m a HUGE fan of peanut butter and those have ALWAYS been my favorite. I like how the peanut butter is on top of a crunchy cookie, it makes for a delicious snack! The Lemonade cookies are tied, though. I am in love with these to be honest and I think they’re a really good addition to the Girl Scout cookie family. Cookies that I’d add to the collection might be an oatmeal cookie of some kind. I really love oatmeal raisin and I think they could come up with one that would really fit well in the bunch. I buy way too many cookies each and every year. I grew up as a Girl Scout and always sold them to my friends and family and now, I feel it’s only necessary that I do the same for the current generation of Girl Scouts. It’s in our ‘code, I guess.”Samantha Ogrodnik, sales assistant

“My favorite cookie has always been and always will be the Tagalong (chocolate peanut butter cookies). I do like the Lemonades and the Thank Yous (love the lemon zest in the cookies, and the chocolate shortbread in the thank yous). “Tom Puckett, news anchor

“I was an all-star seller as a young girl! Always the top seller in my group. I buy them every year!! Thin Mints are my families favorite.”Vanessa Miller, account executive

“While the thin mints have been a staple in our family for years, my new favorites are Coconut chocolate and thanks-a-lot. Girl Scout cookies don’t have enough snap to them, but the coconut/chocolate has a nice taste. And thin mints have that cool taste when you chomp into them. Thanks-a-lot has a nice zing to them. I sometimes think the girl scout cookies are baked and packaged to early and by the time they reach the front door they are stale – at least this is what I’ve experienced the last two years with my Girl Scout Cookie spree. The shortbread and others seem very dry and just plain bland.I recommend cranberry oatmeal cookie, pumpkin spice cookie (since they are always sold and delivered this time of year) and the go-to chocolate chip cookie.” John Gurtler, account executive, voice of the Buffalo Bandits

“I only ate one but I have changed from a thin mint to the lemon cookies as favorite! Love lemon! Have bought cookies every year but now am empty nester and no more cookies in the house!”Tim Holly, VP of Sales

“Samoa/Caramel DeLights (they changed the name to Caramel DeLights a couple years ago) are my favorite. I LOVE coconut.. plus chocolate and caramel! I would like to see a cookie with toffee added to the collection. I usually buy a box a year; I‘ve never had a family member sell them!Krystyna Karstedt, Director of Promotions

Sandy Beach and Tony Caligiuri rated their cookies by number. Sandy thought the Lemonades were the best followed by shortbread dipped in chocolate, thin mints, shortbread, peanut butter patties, shortbread, and caramel delites. The peanut butter patties topped Tony’s list with the classic PB cookies a close number two. Shortbread with chocolate, caramel delite, regular shortbread, lemonades and thin mints.

As for me, I can’t resist the classic peanut butter cookies and I love the refreshing tang of the lemonades. Even better, I’m crazy about empowering girls and young women in their quest find their way in the world!

10 years after Iraq invasion, Sunnis who backed Saddam chafe under Shiite rule

The province remains in rebellion, though a peaceful one.Along both shoulders of the road, the tribal leaders have erected more than 100 canvas tents, where they display posters with their 17 demands, all couched as fitting within current legal order. There s a threat, however, of other means: A hand-painted banner at a political rally that followed a recent religious servicesummed up the mood best: Beware the patient man, if he gets ang [url=http://www.2013tomshoes.net]toms shoes outlet[/url] ry. Ten years after the U.S.-led invasion, Iraq is still a broken country. Its government is democratically elected, but nearly everyone sees it as dysfunctional, and many observers wonder whether the country can hold together and function as a normal state. Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki is widely criticized for what critics call his manipulation of the political process, though they concede that at least some of the problems he faces were inherited from the U.S. occupation.Everyone is watching to see how he handles the Sunni protest in Anbar, which will have consequences for the country as a whole.So far, Maliki has avoided direct confrontation and acquiesced to traffic being rerouted over secondary roads, even though the protest here blocks the main highway linking Baghdad with Jordan.He s denounced the protesters as bubbleheads, provoking a furor, but he s also set up several committees to examine their demands, which are widely seen elsewhere in Iraq as legitimate. Among them: releasing all women held without charges on suspicion of aiding terrorists, moving detainees charged with crimes to provincial prisons, releasing male detainees arrested without charges, closing down military commands that Maliki set up without parliamentary approval, withdrawing the army from cities and limiting any prime minister s tenure to two five-year terms.Still, many in Anbar think that Maliki has gone out of his way to humiliate Sunnis, and the reaction is a rejection of the government and even of parliamentary representation. The tension is great. The flags waving over the Ramadi highway are not the banner the new Iraq adopted after the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, but those that flew here when Saddam ruled.Clearly, the central government would prefer that the rebellion receive no attention. A McClatchy reporter traveling to Ramadi was kept for seven hours at a military checkpoint on March 7 before being allowed to proceed. The next day, military authorities [url=http://www.2013tomshoes.net]http://www.2013tomshoes.net[/url] announced that foreign reporters were banned from traveling to Ramadi. We are not opposing the government, said Rahim Khalil, 19, one of the protesters here. We are at war with the government. A group of college students shot their hands into the air when a visiting reporter asked whether they d prefer Saddam to the present government. In Saddam s day, there was a government and law. Now there is no real government, or law, one said.Members of al Qaida in Iraq also attend the rallies. After the recent religious service and the political rally ended, the stage, which straddled the eastbound half of the highway, was open, and a small group of men who d been hovering in the background, carrying black, jihadist flags, emerged. They announced that it was time for al Qaida to come and start the beheadings. Tribal leaders quickly ushered them off.At the heart of the protest is the vast sectarian divide that splits Iraq, and the rest of the Middle East, between Sunni and Shiite. The Sunnis, who make up some 30 percent of Iraq s 31.1 million population, resent that Maliki, a Shiite, has taken direct or indirect charge of all the security portfolios. They charge that he s used the security forces to intimidate top Sunni politicians and to carry out a wave of arrests on dubious grounds.Sunnis also resent the influence that Shiite-ruled Iran has over Iraqi policy, and they re embittered at Maliki s posture of neutrality in the Syrian rebellion, which they interpret as a fig leaf for support for Syrian President Bashar Assad, a follower of the Alawite branch of Shiism.It s not just Sunnis who are angry with Maliki, however. Ethnic Kurds, who compose at least 15 percent of the population, are enraged at his r [url=http://www.2013tomshoes.net]cheap toms online[/url] efusal to resolve issues regarding revenue sharing and oil sales by the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government. This past week, Kurdish ministers boycotted the Cabinet meeting over the government s decision to approve a budget without Kurdish concurrence.There s even trouble among Shiites, who make up at least 60 percent of the population. Many are fed up with a government that has enormous income on tap from the country s oil resources but has failed to deliver electricity, clean water and sewage, and is viewed as one of the most corrupt on Earth.In the absence of economic and banking reforms, government spending dominates the economy, borrowing for local businesses is highly limited, there s only a limited real estate market and some 40 percent of the working-age population is unemployed or underemployed.Maliki attracts critics these days like a lightning rod. In a new book, Iraq: From War to a New Authoritarianism, British scholar Toby Dodge wrote that such a weak and obviously corrupt state could, once again, provide a breeding ground for increased political violence. The great danger for Iraq, he said, is that its democracy will be swept aside because its institutions are not valued, or seen as worth defending. Not all of Iraq s current problems are of Maliki s doing. Many were identified during the nine years the U.S. controlled the country, something American officials here acknowledge. They blame in part a U.S. focus on trying to win Iraqi support for permanent military bases, or at least a robust security presence, rather than resolving problems.They note, for example, that Sunni dissatisfaction is still fed by the decision in 2003 by L. Paul Bremer, the administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, to ban Saddam s Baath Party, dismantle the Iraqi military and fire higher-level Baath officials from government ministries. The move cost many Sunnis not only their employment but also their pensions, and it helped fuel the Sunni insurgency against the U.S. occupation.Where Maliki gets direct blame, however, is the way he conducted himself after the elections of 2010, when he agreed to head an all-party government with his chief rival, Ayad Allawi, a Shiite who nevertheless had wide Sunni backing. Instead of governing jointly with Allawi, however, Maliki took charge of the top security posts, then went after his political rivals.Within days of U.S. forces leaving the country in December 2011, Maliki sent tanks into the capital s so-called Green Zone, the heavily fortified area where leading politicians live, and arrested bodyguards of the Sunni vice president, Tareq al Hashemi, whom he later accused of plotting bombings against civilian targets. Hashemi fled, first to Iraq s Kurdish north, then to Turkey, where he remains. In September, an Iraqi court sentenced him, in absentia, to death. Maliki also unleashed a wave of arrests of Sunnis for allegedly supporting terrorism. Allawi told McClatchy that Maliki s security services had locked up more than 1,000 members of other political parties, detaining them in secret locations with no access to legal council, and used torture to extract confessions.What sparked the latest Sunni protests was the arrest Dec. 19 of more than 100 security guards in the detail of Rafi al Issawi, Maliki s finance minister and a Sunni. Many Iraqis saw the arrests as a likely prelude to the detention of Issawi himself. The blockade of the road began within days. On March 1, Issawi resigned, announcing his decision at Friday prayers in Ramadi. Maliki s government says it s tried to respond to some of the protesters demands, releasing some people who d been rounded up for terrorism. But few Sunnis think it s enough. He responded to some of the 17 points, said Khamis Abtan, a member of the Ramadi city council, and a political moderate. He freed some of the innocent people, who were already set to be released. At the same time, he detained many new innocent people, he told McClatchy.Allawi is bitter. He said there were probably 100 members of his own party, the Iraqi National Accord, still in government jails, and possibly thousands from his Iraqiya coalition.Moreover, he said members of his alliance increasingly were targeted for assassination. Every single week, we are losing one or two or three people killed, assassinated. For the last four weeks, he said.If anyone doubts the ill-treatment of political detainees in jail, an Amnesty International report earlier this week documented widespread practices that in almost any advanced Western country would lead to a mistrial. Torture and other abuse of detainees has been one of the most persistent and widespread features of Iraq s human rights landscape, and the government shows little inclination either to recognize its extent or take the measures necessary to consign such grave abuses to the past, the report said.In short, the protesters in Ramadi will have cause to remain on the highway for some time to come.

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